Ecomyths is a blog designed to help people think for themselves. Empirical data are contrasted with theories to examine axiomatic myths: ideas taken to be so well accepted that they don't need to be proven. It seeks to change ideas, correct fallacies and challenge dominant constructs by having people read, think and reflect for themselves about contemporary issues. Facts don't change your perspective. Your perspective changes your facts.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

As someone who loves driving and exposing ecomyths in about equal measure, this is a story I just loved.

So not only is the Prius ugly, it is not the ultimate in frugal, fuel efficiency it claims. To really make the comparison even, the driver of the Prius could have turned on the air conditioner and the stereo (as most of us would for a 500 mile journey across Europe) and the gap between the BMW and the Prius would have been even more severe.

Reminds of the analysis I posted some time back which showed a Hummer was more environmentally friendly than a Prius. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, or just plain inconvenient.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Every so often an article appears that just captures the essence of the times. So it is with this piece by John Brignell.

Describing the void that exists at the heart of contemporary politics,Brignell discusses the cult of the zealot and the plague of single issue fanatics who have emerged out of the vacuousness, to become the dominant social phenomenon afflicting society. He outlines the range of ecomyths that zealots utilize to further their agenda, the effects of their strident advocacy and the imperative for the citizenry to re-affirm their democratic control over the institutions of society.

Promotion of limits and constraints that are simply invented without reason

Collusion by the establishment media

Damage to science and its methods

Elimination of things that make life bearable

Making some people very rich while impoverishing the lives of almost everyone else.

They will not be satisfied until they have you shivering in a cave, sipping thin gruel.

The greatest of these movements, rich in all the above characteristics, is the eco-theological one, which has morphed into the anti-carbon crusade.

Excellent, excellent summation of the choice people face between stasist control over, versus dynamist empowerment of, their lives. We do have a choice. But to abstain from acting is to leave the field to zealots and fanatics: never a smart move.

Andrew Potter has this short essay in the Financial Post in which he draws attention to one of the more fervent ideologies embracing AGW, which he labels declinism.

The central components of declinism are the traditional belief in limits, a pervasive pessimism about life and the future, and a leftist allocation of blame on all things progressive, democratic and technological. Indeed, rather than providing possible solutions, human progress itself is a blight on the planet. It is Orwellian zealotry as manifest destiny.

As Potter writes:

There is no point in arguing with declinism, because it is not a set of empirical propositions but an ideology.

As the declinist sees it, the rights-based politics of liberal individualism, combined with the free-market economy, have served to undermine local attachments and communitarian feelings, leading us to seek meaning in shallow consumerism and mindless entertainments.

That is why climate change is the ultimate declinist wet dream. Sure, there is a long tradition of declinist hobby horses, including overpopulation, the exhaustion of natural resources and the industrial poisoning of the land and the sea, but climate change is the rug that pulls the whole room together.

Declinism is both a sin and a betrayal.

It is a sin because it displays an utter lack of faith in humanity, believing that we will inevitably abuse the gifts of freedom, knowledge and power and become the agents of our own destruction.

It is a betrayal of modernity and of the liberal ideals that have breathed life and hope into human progress for the past four hundred years.

Declinism. Not a term used by Nordhaus and Shellenberger in their book Break Through, but identical characteristics to many of the more zealous and intransigent they describe as contributing to the death of environmentalism.

When people of differing ideological perspectives analyse a situation and reach similar conclusions, it adds credibility to the outcome.

The terminology may differ but the analysis is the same: AGW offers a massive pretence for radical environmentalism to dust off its old canards as defining social issues. This conceit allows policy discussions to be framed around constraint, limits and regulation, rather than adaptation, development and human prosperity.

It is Stone Age thinking in an era of unprecedented technological opportunity.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

So the latest data are in. What do they tell us? See this pithy summary by Lorne Gunter.

Well the oceans are cooling, not by much, but they are still on the cool side of zero. At the same time, the satellite data indicate that air temperatures have increased only slightly.

You would think this would be good news. But both sets of data contradict the presumptive basis of all climate models. All climate models are predicated upon oceans warming and upper atmosphere temperatures increasing as key components of global warming. Except this isn't happening.

Perhaps the models are wrong.

Either we don't have enough knowledge to model correctly (very possible) or the assumptions of the models (e.g.AGW) are invalid (also very possible). Neither is sufficient to re-arrange the global economy.

Postscript:Here is Bob Carter's take on these same data. As he writes:

That there is a mismatch between model prediction and 2007 climate reality is again unsurprising.

For as IPCC senior scientist Kevin Trenberth noted recently: “. . . there are no (climate) predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been”; instead there are only “what if” projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios.

Trenberth continues, “None of the models used by IPCC is initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models corresponds even remotely to the current observed climate”.

One reason for the disconnect between models and reality might be the inappropriate way in which many climate data are collected: see here.

Another, might be that the warming (and cooling) are in fact more directly related to solar activity.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Why do ecomyths persist even when the science exists to invalidate them?

Here, courtesy of Junkfood Science, is an excellent illustration of this phenomenon.

The ecomyth is this instance is a variant of the obesity and health myth: in this variant, sugar is blamed for causing cancer.

The sugar-cancer fear has the veneer of science, fuelled by reports made to appear scientific. Like all food fears, this one is nothing new. Each time it's been debunked, it resurfaces using a different technique or elaborate theory attempting to convince us that it is based on science.

...there is no truth to the rumor that sugar causes cancer, or that people with cancer shouldn't eat sugar because it causes cancer to grow faster...

But that hasn't stopped people from continuing to blame cancer on sugars.

The latest study was reported by the media as having found "conclusive evidence" that eating sugary cereals, white bread and other carbohydrates with high glycemic index increase risks of cancer and other modern "lifestyle diseases." The published paper was a meta-analysis of 37 published observational (epidemiological) studies that had looked for correlations between glycemic index/load (GI/GL) and diseases. However,

...try as they might, they were unable to find a viable correlation between GI/GL and any disease. None of the 37 studies, separately or lumped together, could come up with a tenable link.

So all the data fail to indicate any link, any correlation (an we won't even address the question of the study design, the absence of control groups etc.). To a normal person, the absence of any data showing any correlation would seem to indicate what? That there is no relationship. Right? Well not so quick:

The researchers, however, arrived at a different conclusion:

This meta-analysis provides high-level evidence that diets with a high GI, high GL, or both, independently of known confounders, including fiber intake, increase the risk of chronic lifestyle-related diseases. The effect was modest overall... Overall, the GI had a more powerful effect than did the GL... The findings indicate that the judicious choice of low-GI foods offers a similar or higher level of protection as whole-grain foods or high fiber intake in the prevention of chronic lifestyle-related disease.

The explanation for this dramatic contrast of conclusion with reality? with the study's own data?

Not mentioned by any news reporter was that, except for the statisticians, the researchers who conducted this study are authors of GI diet books. Not only that, but they are with a GI testing service and a GI-based licensing program...

As Sandy writes: It's not science itself that we can't trust, it's the bad portrayals of science.

In contrast to the one study that did garner all the media attention, another study on the same subject also was published last week. This one was an epidemiological study, of over 120,000 people over an 11 year period. Its conclusion?

"Overall, our findings do not support the hypothesis that a diet with a high glycemic load or index is associated with a higher risk of colorectal cancer."

There is no one right way for us all to eat, no optimum diet. Being well-fed is important, but trying to invoke fear about 'bad' foods that give cancer and shorten life-spans, is not supported by the scientific data: it is an ecomyth.

Friday, March 21, 2008

In little ways, there are signs that we may have turned a corner with environmentalism and might be ready to start focusing on creating new opportunities, adapting to change and otherwise sustaining human prosperity and, thus, the planet.

Sustainability is an adaptive approach to the future: a future which we know will change and be different from today by definition. The challenge is to retain economic prosperity, increase people's accessibility to prosperity and foster increasingly civil societies in the process. Given the option and the capability, all people wish to have a healthy, safe and vibrant environment within which to live: but that environment can take many forms (urban, rural, wild) and the features that make the landscape attractive to people vary culturally and socially. There is not one formula for sustainability. Sustainability is context specific.

The world is going to change. Good. Not everything that exists today is worth retaining. But much is and each community has the potential to determine what aspects of its landscape it wants to sustain, where it can be improved and what needs to be replaced. The great challenge of sustainability is to facilitate the engagement of people in the determination of the adaptive strategies they can use to practically shape their future and the future they hand over to the next generation.

An initial step is to begin moving people beyond awareness and to a point where they can actively intercede for themselves in the process of change. Well, actually, I guess this will always be step two. Step one is making sure enough people have met their material needs for a community to have an awareness that it has a choice over its future.

The great failure of contemporary environmentalism is that it fails to recognize that economic development is fundamental to sustainability.

Sustainababble and the selective use of data do not empower individuals nor communities. Slowly but surely, this understanding is becoming more widespread.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Not sure about global warming? Still trying to sort out the science of climate change from the political advocacy of global warming?

Here is an editorial for an activist network, posted by a retired physicist, seeking to explain climate change to lay people. Its easy to understand, accurate and a concise summation of what we do, and don't, know.

And two new blogs on climate change, one more academic in origins, the second a more personalized frustration with the current situation.

Lastly, here is the latest from Anthony Watts: a concise explanation of climate change and the solar connection, which is intuitive for most people but has to be spelled out for AGW advocates.

Two quick links today that point to the continued uncertainty that constitutes the existing science on climate change.

The first is another example of the real world not following the directions of the models. The climate is supposedly warming and that should mean elevated sea levels and higher ocean temperatures. Except the oceans aren't warming. Why? We don't know. We can guess (speculate? insert fancy academic term for guess) but we don't know. Its not what the models forecast. Another case of empirical measurement countermining modeled speculation.

The second points to a deeper problem with the provenance of some particularly key tree-ring measurements and whether or not what was measured was really a proxy for temperature or rainfall. It appears some time series that were particularly significant in building public support for global warming, may indeed be a much better proxy for drought than warmth. Not only is this a fundamentally different measure, it also is a situation that dramatically calls into question the vaunted reliability of peer-reviewed, consensus science.

Neither of these examples is "proof" that global warming is a myth. Climate changes. That is not disputed. The myth aspect arises when:

human causation is attached to those changes

the changes are touted as both unprecedented and disastrous, and

the alarmist rhetoric is justified by reference to science that supposedly validates the dogma but is in actuality (as these two examples illustrate), somewhat less conclusive.

Global warming can not be disproved because it is not a scientific fact: it is a political construct that utilises some aspects of scientific data, selectively, to bolster its apparent credibility.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Commenting on recent political events in the United States and the high profile fall from media fawning of Eliot Spitzer in particular, Arnold Kling proposes a new term "Spitzer", which he defines as someone who believes in the aggressive use of political power. A Spitzer believes it is his mission to tell us what to do for own good.

The relevancy of his terminology is immediately apparent when one reads his recent discussion of future energy options.

Effective energy options are critical to continued prosperity, future development and sustained globalization. The developed world has flourished on a diet of cheap energy. The developing world similarly needs access to cheap energy supplies to further future growth and eradicate widespread poverty. The topic of energy policy is likely to dominate political discussion for the next generation.

Sadly, much of that political discussion will be the domain of Spitzers, employing a range of strategies and counterknowledge to exploit a widely recognized issue as a medium for their political gain.

Future energy options can be framed as an opportunity for innovation, market-driven technological ingenuity and effective, sustainable, prosperity. Or they can be framed as limits: intrinsically restricted and divisive, the natural exploitative territory for Spitzers.

Engineering, economics and entrepreneurship: three E's of energy opportunity.

Stop, spin and Spitzer: three S's of energy limits.

Sustainable development is predicated upon the effective integration of economy, society and environment: not the cessation of development, the suppression of innovation nor the imposition of ideology.

Postscript: for more on the implications of the Spitzer case see here.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Anthony Watts has this post on the final day of the New York climate conference. He concludes:

Some valid and interesting ideas have been presented here, and despite all the scoffing by the critics, there wasn’t any group prayer, tobacco booths, or free cans of 10W-40 motor oil. It has been all about science, and science policy.

But those who close their minds and choose to only deal in stereotypes of course won’t ever see that, but instead will just pile on the stereotypical criticism as part of their regular closed mind comfort zone.

His last sentence appears to be particularly prophetic, especially in light of the reactions to the posts by John Tierney where he has the audacity to question why financing and/or sponsorship is a relevant topic.

Just as I have discussed in previous posts, a more limiting variable in dialogue is the absence of an open mind.

So a reporter such as Tierney posts a comment and despite his appeals that respondents focus on the substance of the issues, he gets inundated with reactive comments, most of which allude to a couple of ideological environmental sites for their "proof".

What is on those sites is not an objective proof but a set of ideologically derived statements that resonate well with the readers' own ideological perspective and thus, they define as their truth. No problem. Problems start to arise when people seek to impose their "truth" on others as being the only "truth": to disagree is to be in denial, to be a denier of the "truth". And to bolster their claims, advocates will use appeals to authority (read this, or this is what so and so says, therefore it must be true...), the idea of a consensus (to be outside of the groupthink being an anathema to them) and/or they resort to impugning the motives of those not validating their ideological perspective.

The root problem often is that advocates don't see their perspective as being ideologically dependent nor derived. After all, isn't their perspective simply one of scientific fact? What they fail to realize or recognize, is that often the science is:

disputed

unclear

contested

partial

not empirically based but a function of models and/or simulations with presumptive variables and constants

Most of all, many people fail to acknowledge that science can only measure phenomena, it does not provide us with meaning. Even where all the facts are beyond dispute, what those scientific facts mean is still subject to interpretation.And interpretation is entirely influenced by ideology.

You can't change people's ideology with facts. You also can not change the way someone thinks: only they can.

A closed mind is a mind that no longer wishes to learn: it already knows everything.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Some of the attendees at the independent Climate Conference have posted their thoughts and observations, such as William Briggs.

From what he writes, it appears the conference is indeed both radical, revolutionary, highly subversive and, most of, massively manipulated by...ta dah!..Big Oil! (sarcasm: its not).

But from the outside looking in, the gross characterization given above is all too common place whenever somebody dares question the prevailing environmental orthodoxy. Somewhere on the web, there is a blog(or blogs, plural) characterizing the Heartland conference with the self-same inflammatory invective I employed as sarcasm.

What Briggs describes sounds like a typical academic conference: good key note address, hopefully good food and coffee to sustain attendance and too many concurrent sessions forcing you to choose which speaker to hear first hand and which to by-pass. (If in doubt, apply the Mae West maxim: when faced by the choice of two vices, choose the one you haven't yet experienced!).

Sadly, the politics of climate change often act to obscure meaningful debate. Too frequentlyanyone who takes a stand against the petty, miserly and coercive politics of environmentalism can be written off as a mouthpiece for Big Oil, regardless of the facts.

The media play a large role, seeking to slot people and their perspectives into pre-defined categories and stereotypes lest their framing of the issue be exposed as inaccurate or irrelevant. As Briggs comments, his response to a TV reporter was not inflammatory but nuanced and Briggs was left with the impression that he had disappointed him by not being dogmatic on any of the questions he asked me.

Climate change is like most environmental issues: as complex and textured, as it is dynamic and layered. Climate realists are not denying change, neither are they blind nor deaf to scientific data. What they do have, however, is the absence of a pre-determined, proscribed, dogmatic, ideology that frames the problem so as to preclude the consideration of alternative explanations.

In many situations, the AGW thesis is so entrenched that it is presumptive within all discussion. In these areas of enquiry, all questions are framed with the existence of AGW as an embedded construct: it is simply not possible to posit any other explanation.

Disciplinary paradigms do undergo periodic revision and change. Eventually, AGW will cease to be the prevailing paradigm. The only question is, at what cost and over what time period.

The Heartland Conference should act to draw a line in the sand in climate discussions: either protagonists pick up the gauntlet and seek to examine the problems with the underlying science, explore alternative explanations and develop adaptive strategies, or they can revert to hiding behind ideological invective as a cover for their intransigence and close-mindedness.

Postscript: here is the conference summary from William Briggs -- concise, eloquent and a useful editorial that I hope has wide distribution

Some of the attendees at the independent Climate Conference have posted their thoughts and observations, such as William Briggs.

From what he writes, it appears the conference is indeed both radical, revolutionary, highly subversive and, most of, massively manipulated by...ta dah!..Big Oil! (sarcasm: its not).

But from the outside looking in, the gross characterization given above is all too common place whenever somebody dares question the prevailing environmental orthodoxy. Somewhere on the web, there is a blog(or blogs, plural) characterizing the Heartland conference with the self-same inflammatory invective I employed as sarcasm.

What Briggs describes sounds like a typical academic conference: good key note address, hopefully good food and coffee to sustain attendance and too many concurrent sessions forcing you to choose which speaker to hear first hand and which to by-pass. (If in doubt, apply the Mae West maxim: when faced by the choice of two vices, choose the one you haven't yet experienced!).

Sadly, the politics of climate change often act to obscure meaningful debate. Too frequentlyanyone who takes a stand against the petty, miserly and coercive politics of environmentalism can be written off as a mouthpiece for Big Oil, regardless of the facts.

The media play a large role, seeking to slot people and their perspectives into pre-defined categories and stereotypes lest their framing of the issue be exposed as inaccurate or irrelevant. As Briggs comments, his response to a TV reporter was not inflammatory but nuanced and Briggs was left with the impression that he had disappointed him by not being dogmatic on any of the questions he asked me.

Climate change is like most environmental issues: as complex and textured, as it is dynamic and layered. Climate realists are not denying change, neither are they blind nor deaf to scientific data. What they do have, however, is the absence of a pre-determined, proscribed, dogmatic, ideology that frames the problem so as to preclude the consideration of alternative explanations.

In many situations, the AGW thesis is so entrenched that it is presumptive within all discussion. In these areas of enquiry, all questions are framed with the existence of AGW as an embedded construct: it is simply not possible to posit any other explanation.

Disciplinary paradigms do undergo periodic revision and change. Eventually, AGW will cease to be the prevailing paradigm. The only question is, at what cost and over what time period.

The Heartland Conference should act to draw a line in the sand in climate discussions: either protagonists pick up the gauntlet and seek to examine the problems with the underlying science, explore alternative explanations and develop adaptive strategies, or they can revert to hiding behind ideological invective as a cover for their intransigence and close-mindedness.

Monday, March 03, 2008

The Climate Change Conference in New York has commenced and here's hoping all media will be as constructive in their reporting as this post by John Tierney.

Embedded within Tierney's article is the link to this summary of climate realism: nature, not human activity, rules the climate. Credit Tierney also for requesting that comments focus solely on the accuracy of what the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change include in their report.

Now at least, the climate magisterium have a single summary of the objections to their dogma, the basis for alternative policy responses and the reasoning behind climate realism.

In his foreword to the NIPCC report, Frederick Seitz offers this cogent summation:

The IPCC is pre-programmed to produce reports to support the hypotheses of anthropogenic warming and the control of greenhouse gases, as envisioned in the Global Climate Treaty.

The 1990 IPCC Summary completely ignored satellite data, since they showed no warming.

The 1995 IPCC report was notorious for the significant alterations made to the text after it was approved by the scientists – in order to convey the impression of a human influence.

The 2001 IPCC report claimed the twentieth century showed ‘unusual warming’ based on the now-discredited hockey-stick graph.

The latest IPCC report, published in 2007, completely devaluates the climate contributions from changes in solar activity, which are likely to dominate any human influence.

Our concern about the environment, going back some 40 years, has taught us important lessons. It is one thing to impose drastic measures and harsh economic penalties when an environmental problemis clear-cut and severe. It is foolish to do so when the problem is largely hypothetical and notsubstantiated by observations.

As NIPCC shows by offering an independent, non-governmental ‘second opinion’ on the ‘global warming’ issue, we do not currently have any convincing evidence or observations of significant climate change from other than natural causes

Saturday, March 01, 2008

The next week will be very interesting. With most of the world in the grip of a solid winter, with global temperatures markedly down and with the latest media stunts on climate failing dramatically, the major event of the week is the International Conference on Climate Change being held in New York.

Except this is not an academic society conference, nor one hosted by a professional organization, nor sanctioned by the UN or the IPCC. It is not being held in some tropical resort. The organizers are the Heartland Institute and its presenters are a who's who of climate "skeptics". (Although some key people are notably absent...I meant Steve McIntyre actually!)

Impressively, the organizers have made both the program and the biographies of presenters readily available to both the media and to those who would oppose discussion/debate on climate matters except by those authorized to spout the approved dogma. The organizers know their perspective is not that of the prevailing dogma. They know they are likely to be criticized and who by, and have sought to have full disclosure of affiliation, background, expertise and sponsorship.

And that's why I say it will be interesting. We can expect and anticipate how the conference will play in the enviro-left blogs: what will tell the tale will be how the event is portrayed by the mainstream media. As a barometer of prevailing public sentiment, what take home message will the mainstream media use to encapsulate the Conference? Because one thing we know for sure, most politicians today do not lead but seek to embrace the direction of public opinion.

And although it doesn't truly fit today's theme, this quote of the day from Samizdata was too good to be missed:

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. Ronald Reagan

Postscript: on the eve of the Conference, here is how the New York Times was framing discussion. I like the phrase climate realist -- seems to offer a way forward.

About Me

Dr. L. Graham Smith has over thirty years experience as a researcher, teacher and consultant in resources management. The author of over 70 publications, his writings successfully balance academic and practical considerations and provide a systematic framework for empowering change. His areas of expertise include: environmental ideology; globalization; the dynamics of change; the design and implementation of strategic planning processes; sustainability and its implementation; individual and institutional capacity building; educational praxis and, skills development.

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Sustainability

Sustainability is the capacity of a system to engage in the complexities of continuous improvement consistent with deep values of human purpose. Fullan (2005)

Dynamism is Freedom

Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. Heinlein

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The more you love, the more you can love--and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just. Heinlein.